Former Suns GM Steve Kerr on the Stoudemire for Curry almost-trade in 2009: “We were very far down the road”

This is one of the series of interviews I conducted recently while trying to reconstruct the events and almost-decisions that led to the Warriors selecting and keeping Stephen Curry in the 2009 draft… after almost trading him to Phoenix.

Steve Kerr was the Suns’ president and GM at the time–about to enter his final full season in that role.

When we spoke, Kerr wanted to make clear that he was happy to speak about the details of the near-trade because he isn’t a team executive any more and because he’s in the media and understands that fans are very interested in how these things happen… or don’t.

—-STEVE KERR interview transcript/

-Q: Were you guys close to a trade with the Warriors for Curry?

-KERR: It was close. There was not a deal done. But it was tricky because of Amare’s physical situation. Because he had bad knees, any deal that we were going to make would’ve been subject to a physical…

But we were very far down the road.

I think we felt like from our side that if Steph dropped to 7 where they were picking that we were going to get a deal done. That’s what it felt like.

At the time with all the discussions… we had a lot of discussions, Larry and I did. But again that’s all part of the way things work in the NBA–until something is approved by the league office, you can’t count on it.

We felt pretty good about it, though.

-Q: Was it strictly about Steph or did you have that deal in place if Curry was gone and the Warriors took and traded you Jordan Hill, too?

-KERR: Jordan Hill? No, he wasn’t part of it. Other than he was in that same draft. I think he went next to the Knicks.

If you remember, we were kind at the final stages of our run with Nash and Amare and so we were in a difficult spot. We were looking towards the future but we also knew we still had a team that was very competitive.

In fact by not making that deal we were able to keep that group togetter and made the conference finals that year with Amare as our starting four.

We had a great season, but had an aging team but knew were eventually going to have to make that transition. That (trade) would’ve been the first domino to fall for the Suns’ sort of re-invention.

But in some ways it worked out fine because we had a great year, we came within a couple games of getting to the finals. It was just one of those things.

It worked out great for the Warriors and we came close. But it’s all… this kind of stuff happens all the time.

-Q: Did you give the Warriors permission to talk to Amare about a contract extension as a step in a possible trade?

-KERR: We never got that far. That would’ve been part of it. He would’ve been a free agent the following summer–obviously teams are reluctant to trade for coming free agents.

That would’ve been the next part of the conversation… a physical and an extension and that kind of stuff.

But those … the timing of all that stuff is so tricky because… even the execution of it. I had other deals like that, too, when I was the general manager with other players, potential trades where the team on the other end said all right, I’ll make a deal if he agrees to an extesion and you sit there and say, well,if I tell this player this is what’s happening but he doesn’t want to go there and sign, have I now lost him emotionally because he knows I tried to trade him?

These are the difficult sort of no-win propositions of being a general manager… that’s why it’s dicey and you have to really sort of tread lightly in those situations.

-Q: Did the Curry talks go on a couple more days even after the draft?

-KERR: No, no. My sense is the Warriors were thrilled to get him and once he was there and was introduced to the media it was over, they wanted him.

But I don’t know, I wasn’t in there. I’m sure they had plenty of internal discussions.

Most GMs are reluctant to discuss deals that may or may not have happened. I don’t mind talking about them because I’m not the GM any more. I’m in the media now. I think fans want to hear stuff like this. I don’t feel like this is damaging to anybody.

If I felt like it was disrespectful, I wouldn’t talk about it… But I have no beef at all with Larry or Nellie. Just a pretty big deal that was discussed.

-Q: But the moment when the Warriors took Curry, were you thinking they were selecting him to trade to you?

-KERR: Not necessarily. But we felt like he was going to go the pick before to Minnesota and when he didn’t, to me, I mean, Curry was the obvious pick regardless of who was picking next.

I know the Knicks were dying to get him at 8 or 9, whatever their pick was…

And we looked at him as the next Nash, the point guard of the future. I’m sure the Warriors once they got their hands on him, I’m sure they were thinking the same thing, ‘We’ve got our point guard of the future.’

There’s always a thousand different things you’re discussing come draft time. A lot of things in the hopper and you’ve got to sort through them all.

-Q: When you took Earl Clark over Jrue Holiday at 14 was that partly because you thought you had Curry and didn’t want to draft two point guards?

-KERR: We liked Holiday a lot. We still had Nash, we had Goran Dragic who we loved and we had a potential thought we had a potential deal involving Curry.

We didn’t know what was going to happen. And so you toss all that together, we were thinking, ‘Well, we could end up with four point guards. Do we take a guy and then just let it sort out later?’

That’s probably the right thing to do, just take the best player and sort it out later.

But we were in desperate need of a wing defender and we liked Earl’s potential as a 3-4 defender which is a critical piece these days to guard all these hybrid fours and he fit a lot better into what we were trying to do for the next year. Obviously in retrospect Holiday was the better player as it turned out…

-Q: Those are four pretty good PGs—Nash, Curry, Dragic and Holiday. Wow, other than that’s too many point guards, can you imagine that roster?

-KERRY: Yeah, those are four good point guards, huh?

-Q: So was the plan to play Curry with Nash?

-KERR: Oh yeah, the plan was to have that be kind of succession plan.

-Q: I guess the way Curry is playing now explains why you wanted him so badly.

-KERR: We loved him. The first time I saw him play live was in Anaheim. He was with Davidson and played UCLA in the Wooden classic and he was magical.

He didn’t even shoot that well but just his feel and his passing. I was with a lot of our scouts, Bruce Frazier, we’re watching and we’re like, ‘This is the second coming of Steve Nash. This guy is special.’

Despite his size or lack thereof you could just see it. That was I think during his sophomore year. We had our eye on him for a long time. And didn’t think we’d ever have a shot to get him, especially after he blew up the next year. And so this was all just… what GMs do.

I’m sure a lot of GMs called the Warriors too and called other teams and tried to move up. But we thought he was going to be special. At the end it didn’t matter; we didn’t get him.

All it is now is a good story.

-Q: How long were you talking with the Warriors about this specific proposal?

-KERR: It was probably a week or two.

Every team, every general manager has moments like that–I should’ve done this, should’ve done that.

In the end, as Jerry West once told me, if you can bat better than .500 in the NBA you’re doing a really god job. One out of two right, then you’re actually doing pretty well.

I still remember how the consensus among Warrior fans seemed to be that the Warriors needed a big man, a power player – Jordan Hill. Can you imagine if we had ended up with Hill and the Suns with Curry.? People would be talking about this in a way similar to the way they talk about McHale and Parish for Joe Barry Carroll.

ssclesq

Best thing ever for Bay Area basketball, no not curry, lacob and Jerry west!

PX

I don’t remember that the consensus was taking a big man. I think most Warrior fans want the best player available, which was clearly Steph at the time. All of those around me were shocked that Minny passed him up.

I do remember that many fans saying we should take Andre Drummond 2 years ago, which in hindsight would have been the better pick than Barnes. Oh well.